Police Standoffs: L.A. program seeks tools to defuse tense situations

Dennis Nett/The Post-Standard A SWAT vehicle at the scene of a September standoff on Laursen Street in Nedrow. Police in Los Angeles are re-interviewing subjects of standoffs to find out if police could have done something differently to shorten or prevent the standoff.

On Tuesday, a New York state trooper shot and killed a man who was threatening suicide. The fatal shooting near Albany followed a brief standoff during which troopers pleaded with the 54-year-old man to drop his .22-caliber rifle.

Thankfully, many similar events have better outcomes. At least three local police standoffs in the last year ended without tragedy.

In March, a Syracuse man surrendered after an overnight standoff in his Eastwood home. Police fired tear gas into the home, from which the man’s wife and her five children fled after a domestic dispute. The suspect had a shotgun.

In August 2010, a six-hour standoff followed the holdup of a South Side restaurant that led to an exchange of gunfire with Syracuse police. Police sealed off the 1200 block of South Avenue after a robbery at Omanii’s Lemonade Heaven restaurant. Three children took refuge in a bathtub of a nearby home after they heard shots.

In another case last September, a 35-year-old Syracuse man walked out of his mother’s house after a two-hour standoff; police said he shot his brother’s girlfriend in the chest. A one-month-old infant was inside during the standoff.

Could these standoffs have ended more quickly? Could police have done something differently? What strategies help defuse tension?

Two officers with the Los Angeles Police Department are trying to address those questions. In the past four years, the officers have interviewed 40 people involved with police standoffs to understand the suspects’ perspective and improve how police respond to these tense situations. The officers are developing a training program for the LAPD.

One suspect was involved in a seven-hour standoff. She was barricaded inside her apartment with her former girlfriend and was threatening to kill herself. She told the LA officers who interviewed her three years after the incident that when police arriving at the scene used the word “hostage,” she panicked and thought she had no other option.

A man the officers interviewed stood with a gun outside a Hollywood police station for hours, hoping officers would kill him. He told the interviewers the police “showed amazing restraint” and that he put down the gun because he did not want an officer to have to deal with the emotional effects of shooting him.

“Just the way you approach a situation verbally or with your body language can put people on the defensive,” Officer Michael Baker told The New York Times. “It’s been my experience from talking to people that a lot of them get scared, and that’s the way they react the way they do.”

The Syracuse Police Department responds to four or five standoffs a year, said Sgt. Tom Connellan. Many involve domestic incidents.

The Syracuse department is watching the LAPD project with interest. “We’re interested to learn what would have made them come out sooner,” Connellan said.

Each case is different, but standoff strategies developed in Los Angeles have the potential to prevent tragedies here and in countless other jurisdictions.